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History of Holland > Dutch painters > Dutch landscape painters
Dutch landscape painters
The first view we have of landscape art pure and simple, the faithful transcription of natural objects, is given us by the Dutch landscape painters of the 17th century. The Dutch artists were the first to give a distinctive character to landscape painting. They were marvellous interpreters of nature. They were the first realists, depicting nature for its own beauty, its own spirit. Through van Goyen and Wynants to Aelbert Cuyp, then on to Jacob van Ruisdael and Hobbema, these are the men who revealed nature strongly, sanely, largely. The impalpable, limitless sky, the enveloping atmosphere, the breaking tints of sun-chased clouds, the turbulent waters or calm, transparent streams, the green, the brown, the gold of foliage or harvest, all this they portrayed. The first steps to turn from the Italian interpretation of landscape, as taught by Elsheimer or by his heavy counterpart, Salvator Rosa, were hesitating and often failing. But Jan Gerritsz Cuyp (1575-1651), the father of Aelbert Cuyp, whose only works in the Netherland Galleries are portraits, essayed to show also the rich, characterful life of nature with its wealth of beauty. His first instruction was received from Abraham Bloemaert, but his independent development was not constrained, and he left the imaginary world of his master's composing for one of the reality of life. Esaias van de Velde (1590-1630), of Haarlem, also chose these subjects, still replete with human activity, but at the same time with an outdoor feeling that was setting the mark for larger expression. His few pictures that remain give us scenes of wars and fairs and portraits, but always with intimate, local landscape settings, and no longer with an exotic, garish Italian sky. |
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